


Feral Dreams

by yyyhhhMilkyCarroty



Category: ENHYPEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anxiety, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Death, Happy Birthday Sunghoon!, Heeseung doesn't know anything, Lowkey confusing, M/M, Nightmares, Past Lives, Sunghoon seriously needs to do something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27940157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yyyhhhMilkyCarroty/pseuds/yyyhhhMilkyCarroty
Summary: He’s in the woods again. He’s alone. Just him and the shadows. It’s cold, impossibly cold. Maybe this is what death feels like.
Relationships: Lee Geonu & Lee Heeseung, Lee Heeseung/Park Sunghoon
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	Feral Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel uncomfortable with the tags, please do not read this fic. English is not my mother tongue so please excuse me if there are any mistakes.
> 
> Enjoy.

Sunghoon registers the darkness first; the grey sky, the shadows, the splatter of moonlight creeping between the barren branches of dead trees. Then the sound of the wind; sharp and low and hollow, a haunting whisper, a last breath. The woods look like they expand everywhere, consuming him. His chest feels heavy with an unnamed fear, clawing into his skin, his spine, finding home in his bones.

He starts walking because it seems like the better option than staying still, even if he has no idea which way to go. It’s all the same. The darkness is all the same. But he walks anyway because it’s better than standing still just waiting for something to catch him.

It feels like he’s in a loop; time and space meaningless in this endless night, in the shadows of the woods. He walks for what feels like hours and yet the angle of the moon hasn’t shifted.

Where am I? Where am I going? plays in his head with every step.

And then he’s falling, spiralling down a dark hole. Suddenly it’s red. Red like the setting sun, ambers of a weakening fire. And blood. Sunghoon knows it’s blood; pooling at his feet, dripping from his arm to his fingers. Bloodied hand holding onto another one. Holding on for dear life.

He’s not sure if he makes a sound, if it leaves his lips. But he screams inside his chest, begs, 'Don’t let go'.

But the boy only smiles, beautiful and sweet. He doesn’t seem to fit in with the atmosphere of death surrounding them. The doe eyed boy doesn’t belong. But he’s already falling and Sunghoon can’t do anything about it. The boy falls with his smile intact, doesn’t scream or shout. It’s silent, almost too quiet. Then again, death has always been silent and unassuming. Even in violence, death works so quietly. 

“No!” Sunghoon screams, but it only echoes through the empty room. The light of the street lights filter slightly through his curtains, casting the dorm room in dark blue shadow. He sits upright in his bed, catching his breath, willing for his heartbeat to calm down.

“It’s just a dream,” he says to himself as he tries to go back to sleep. 

“It’s only a bad dream,” he repeats and hopes to convince himself.

For a couple of weeks, Sunghoon’s been woken up every morning by the same dream, heartbeat racing and adrenaline high. He feels the sweat dotting his forehead and temples, the sound of his laboured breathing almost drowned out by the heartbeat loud in his eardrums. 

He tried to ignore it the first few days. But now it’s getting a little terrifying how the dreams play like a loop every single night as he lays down to rest, how ridiculous it is that it still affects him so deeply every single time.

It’s just a dream. It’s just a bad dream , he convinces himself before his mind spirals into something worse. 

It’s probably all the poetry he’s been reading about ghosts and lost souls drifting without a home to return to. It’s probably the story he’s reading for his ancient literature course about the place where the dead are left unburied, waiting for the ground to consume them, never escaping their misery even in death.

That’s all there is to it. Just his thoughts running wild, thinking too much about words from a past long gone. Maybe his uncle was right about studying literature and philosophy. Most of it is just nonsense rotting his brain. It’s not the right way. 

This is what he gets for straying; dreams of fictional ghosts. 

Sunghoon’s in the woods again with the shrilling wind whistling through the barren branches. It’s all different shades of dark; shadows of shadows. But this time it’s different. He smells the rot, decaying flesh. It’s so strong it’s overwhelming.

He tries to run away, to find air to breathe that is not drowned by the smell of death. But his feet won’t move, the hem of his pants being pulled, clawed by hands more skeleton than flesh. The hands pull at his feet, digging sharp nails into his ankles like they’re going to pull him into the earth with them. They won’t let him go. Death calling for him. 

It’s closer than he thinks. 

Sunghoon doesn’t sleep. It feels like there’s a shadow following him even as he’s awake, trekking around campus. It feels like there’s a darkness that’s ready to consume him, only a few steps away. And he can’t run. 

He doesn’t sleep as much as he should. And walks around the day like death has already consumed him, his steps heavy. 

His eyes are shut. Sunghoon only feels the sharp cold wind of winter. He only feels the sharp sting of whips hitting his back, splitting his skin open. He doesn’t see anything with his eyes shut tightly as the pain takes over his whole body, nerves singing. 

There’s someone screaming. It’s someone else. Begging for the offender to stop. You’re going to kill him. You’re going to kill him. The voice is familiar, someone he’s grown up with.

Sunghoon's own voice is quiet. He doesn’t make a sound. He will not give in to the pain. He bites on his lips until they bleed. He won’t give them the satisfaction of hearing his pain. They don’t deserve it. 

When Sunghoon wakes up, the pain is still so vivid, he’s sure there are wounds on his back. He checks the mirror a few times as he gets ready just to make sure. 

The pain stays throughout the day. Stays until he sleeps and dreams of pain that’s less physical, that starts in the heart and spreads slowly through his veins. 

He repeats it in his head. It’s only a dream. It’s just a bad dream .

He looks terrible and he wishes he can hide it better. But there’s not much he can hide from Jay. 

“Yah Park Sunghoon, are you okay?” his brother asks the moment Sunghoon steps into the old house, with memories that haunt him in different ways. He suddenly thinks about ghosts; nightmares in your sleep, wandering hungry souls, and the past that quietly waits like settled dust. 

“I’m fine, Jay,” Sunghoon immediately assures. He tries to smile. He’s not sure if it’s convincing or it’s just Jay being good at knowing when to stop asking him questions he’s not ready to talk about. Jay doesn’t press him further at least.

They have dinner together. His uncle says nothing of the heavy dark circles under his eyes. He only asks about Sunghoon’s studies, with hints of accusations, with the underlying tone of I think you’re wasting your time when you should be doing something else .

The grand dinner doesn’t feel so grand when family is just the three of them. Sunghoon sits quietly and answers his uncle’s questions as little as he can in between Jay’s diversions into the discussion about the family business. In between Sunghoon wonders how things might be like if there were more of them, if his mother didn’t leave so soon, taking all the warmth with her. 

Another year and it’s still the same silence.

“I just haven’t been getting enough sleep,” Sunghoon admits after days of Jay hovering with his loud silences. Sunghoon decides he can share at least this without worrying his brother too much. Jay would understand. He, too, took time to adjust their family’s strict sleeping schedules when he went to university, pursuing a business degree like their uncle expected. The golden child.

Sunghoon doesn’t talk about nightmares and ghosts and death. Jay would worry too much if he did. Their family has never been good with abstract things, the unknown, things that are neither white nor black. 

“You should try catching up on sleep while you’re on break. Try to rest,” Jay advises and he already looks a bit better, relieved.

“Okay.” So Sunghoon decides to go to the doctor, asks for a prescription of sleeping pills, with false excuses of studying stress. Maybe they are. Maybe it is just stress from the workload, the new ideas he’s trying to digest, questioning the rights and wrongs he’s been taught growing up.

He’s not completely lying. 

Sunghoon sleeps longer. He’s not sure if it’s better. He sleeps. 

But the nightmares continue, playing like a broken record, a little fragmented, jumping from one scene to another. But he always ends up back at the forest of shadows, the stench and chill of death loud. 

The pills only help keep him asleep instead of having the nightmares jolt him awake. The pills keep him from waking up and lying awake, staring at his ceiling while he wills for his heart rate to slow down. It keeps him asleep until it’s time for him to wake up just before the dawn breaks. It keeps him asleep and he can’t wake up. Even as he screams and cries and falls falls falls. He stays there as the horrors unfold.

The pills keep him trapped in the nightmare and maybe it’s worse. Death doesn’t appear heavy on his face anymore, but it’s heavier in his bones. 

But they’re just dreams.

Once the spring semester starts, Sunghoon only feels worse; brain muddled and heavy. Around him life blooms but inside everything feels like it’s rotting.

He dreams of a cold damp cave, of a dying fire. Of a boy broken and wounded. Of a song that makes his heart ache, stomach twisting. It tastes like longing, like love even if he has no idea what it really means.

He wakes up with the song still ringing in his head, pulling at his heartstrings. He hasn’t felt a loss like this in a long time. And he has lost, lost too much. But not like this; losing something he never had, never known.

The life of a college student continues. Sunghoon wakes up groggy from another dream, another trip to the woods. It feels like a second home now. 

He almost runs late to his 8am lecture with Professor Yoongi, Music Composition. He underestimated how fast he’s able to walk across campus. He’s a little out of breath as he takes a seat, the first vacant seat he could find.

He sighs in relief. At least the professor hasn’t arrived yet.

A chuckle breaks his non-thoughts, trickling through his loud heartbeats. It’s not unkind and comes with a soft, “I hope you’re okay. I guess that’s one way to wake up this early in the morning.”

And Sunghoon is ready to reply with a simple this is not early for me but the face looking back at him stops him cold. He feels his heart jumping out of his chest. It’s too real.

The boy smiles. That smile that’s been haunting Sunghoon’s nights. It can’t be. “Hi, I’m Lee Heeseung.”

“Park Sunghoon,” he manages to choke out, he is never impolite enough to not reply to someone even as he feels the world spinning around him like he’s being sucked into a whirlpool.

“Nice to meet you, Sunghoon,” he smiles wider; doe eyes shining, cheeks high. Even the way he says Sunghoon is the same. This is not happening, this cannot be happening.

He’s not exactly the same, of course. It’s the modern clothes, the shorter hair, the way his skin looks like it has actually seen the sun. His cheeks aren’t as sallow, aren’t so skeletal. He looks healthy. He looks… real.

He’s holding onto Heeseung’s hand as tightly as he can. He’s crying he thinks; tastes the salty tears with the coppery blood.

“Heeseung-ah, please ,” he’s begging. He’s been begging for months and he’s tired. He’s so tired. He just wants Heeseung to let Sunghoon pull him up, save him.

“Come back with me,” he’s said before in quiet corridors. “Come home with me and let me help you.”

But Heeseung doesn’t want to be saved. Even as he’s hanging off a cliff, he is at peace with himself. This is where he wants to be. 

“Let me go, Sunghoon,” he says sweetly like he’s asking a lover for a favour. 

And Sunghoon is too tired. So he lets go again.

It’s only a dream . Tomorrow night it will just start again.

They read about soulmates and Sunghoon silently wonders if it can be true. 

“It’s a ridiculous notion. I would hate to think that my life is tied to fate, that it has decided who I should fall in love with,” Heeseung says in class as they discuss the novel. He has loud opinions he’s unafraid to share with the rest of the room and whoever else is willing to listen.

Sunghoon stays quiet, won’t usually say much unless asked. But he finds himself wondering if he agrees. A few months ago, he would agree with such conviction. But now it’s not the same.

There’s a number of truths he’s reconsidering.

Flowers rain over him, sweet peonies in various colours. It feels like poetry brought to life.

When he looks up there he is, Heeseung, dangling over a window, twirling a dark wooden flute between his fingers. He smiles but there’s a sharpness that’s not usually there. “Sunghoon – ah, no, Benjamin. What a coincidence.”

And Sunghoon finds himself hating it every time Heeseung calls him that. He’s still not sure why. Why it rakes his heart whenever Heeseung doesn’t just call him by his name.

But Sunghoon finds himself unable to walk away, unable to deny Heeseung the company even as it’s completely obvious how drunk he is, how difficult he would be. He doesn’t like how Heeseung looks like a ghost, like the women surrounding him all various shades of pretty.

“I’ll give them to you. These are your flowers now.” And suddenly Sunghoon’s heart is doing that damn thing where it squeezes so tight like he might just get a heart attack.

“Sunghoon,” a voice calls him, like an echo from far away. “Sunghoon.”

It gets closer and startles Sunghoon into consciousness. Had he been sleeping? He’s in the lecture. Professor Yoongi is talking about something he has only the slightest vague idea of.

He couldn’t have been asleep. He’s never drifted off to sleep in the middle of the day before. But lately it’s getting harder to tell night and day. And he would worry if he allows himself to. He won’t allow himself to.

“Hmm,” Sunghoon says in acknowledgement. A little bit like a question.

“Sunghoon-ah, I didn’t realise you can focus that hard,” Heeseung whispers, as to not interrupt the lecture going on. Sunghoon figures he wasn’t asleep at all, probably just lost in his thoughts, or at least lost somewhere. “I was going to ask if you want to partner for the assignment. I don’t really know anyone else in this course.”

“Mn,” Sunghoon replies, nodding, willing his heart not to soar out of his ribcage at the thought of spending time with Heeseung. That Heeseung thought of him. That Heeseung thinks of them as friends at least.

At least. Has Sunghoon been thinking of Heeseung as something more?

Rain is pouring, thrumming against his nerves. Heeseung is delirious and Sunghoon aches to make it stop. Whatever pain that’s burdening Heeseung, he wants to make it stop.

“Sunghoon, if I have to finally fight against them, I’d prefer to fight with you. If I’m doomed to death, at least I could be killed by you,” he says with a heavy smile. He says it like it’s inevitable and not just a possibility. Sunghoon hates it.

He hates that he’s letting Heeseung spiral. He hates that he can’t do anything to help. He hates the way his chest constricts with a pain that shouldn’t feel so physical.

It’s just a dream. It can’t hurt him if it’s only a dream.

Sunghoon stares at his ceiling. It’s still early, dawn only just breaking. He thinks he hears birds chirping outside with their spring song.

He lets his thoughts settle, pooling at the bottom of his skull. They’ve been running around too much and he can’t comprehend them.

But as he continues to lie on his bed, finally listening to them, he feels like a colossal fool. How is it that he never realised that he’s in love with this boy. The ghost of his nights, of his dreams.

Sunghoon’s in love with him and that scares him more than the nightmares.

Heeseung feels like spring; warm sunshine, sweet songs. His laughs echo through every room he’s in, echo through Sunghoon’s head and chest.

They’ve been meeting a lot outside of classes to work on the assignment. They started with the library but Heeseung is too loud – not in a bad way, never in a bad way – so they have to leave. Now it’s mostly the outdoor tables near their faculty, or sometimes Sunghoon’s room because he doesn’t have a roommate and it’s easier.

Heeseung also doesn’t have much sense for personal space, always leaning in too close with his rather broad shoulders and sharp jawline and the soft twinkle of his eyes and the moles on his cheeks that’s been haunting Sunghoon’s dreams more and more.

“Sunghoon-ah,” Heeseung says his name like a song. “Have you finished reading that paper?”

Sunghoon can only shake his head. He doesn’t really remember if he had.

Heeseung smiles, clicks his tongue playfully. “Ah, Sunghoon-ah, I thought you’re more diligent than this. Why does it feel like I’m carrying all the weight?”

But he’s still smiling. Always smiling. The same smile as the ghost of his nights. But not the smile when he’s sad or angry. It’s the smile when he calls him Heeseung all quiet and soft like a secret. Sunghoon wants to be in love with this Heeseung.

It’s dark. Or rather it’s like there’s a fog around him, his vision blurred, hazy. And it burns. Like smoke. He doesn’t understand what’s going on. 

Just that his heart feels like it’s broken to pieces. Crushed. But it’s still there; splintering and aching in his chest. An open wound.

Then he feels a pain more tangible, like skin being torched, burnt like sizzling meat on a pan.

He doesn’t scream. It’s not as painful as the pain within.

Sunghoon’s taking a shower and the water stings his skin, his chest. It surprises him when he finds a mark there, an unhealed wound. 

It’s not bleeding anymore, the blood already dried. It looks a little nasty. Like his skin was carved by a sharp object. It scares him. More so because it was the same place he felt the burning pain the night before, where the heat marked his skin.

He traces the lines and it feels real. This feels too real to be a dream.

It’s harder to convince himself now. It’s only a dream. It’s just a bad dream.

Days are starting to merge together. Sunghoon has no idea where the time goes or what he does. He thinks he’s doing fine with his courses, he’s not failing. Not yet. When his brother calls, he doesn’t sound overly concerned, just the regular dose. Jay will always worry about him; has been worrying about him since their mother died (Sunghoon hates putting it like that, dying doesn’t explain everything that happened, the how that he was too young to understand).

Soon, he is submitting the assignment he has been working with Heeseung for the past three weeks. Being with Heeseung. The only thing that keeps him tethered to this reality, keeps him grounded. He only remembers his time with Heeseung with absolute clarity.

They don’t just do their work together. They talk about other courses as well, things beyond that, ideas too big for Sunghoon to hold before. Heeseung makes him question everything; the sun and the moon, good and bad, the way Sunghoon’s heart feels like it has a chronic illness.

He’s in the woods again. He’s alone. Just him and the shadows. It’s cold, impossibly cold. Maybe this is what death feels like.

And then there’s the sound of a dizi whistling through the trees, carried by the wind. A familiar song.

He finds a piano and plays the melody that has made home in his head, his veins. He plays it like he’s played it for years, fingers remembering the notes like it’s part of his muscle memory. He plays the song and gets lost in it.

He can see the smile.

The cave is cold and he’s in pain. The ache blooms from his leg and Sunghoon doesn’t think he can walk, let alone run to escape the horrors awaiting them. He has a feeling that he might die here.

But Heeseung is here. Heeseung stayed with him and maybe not everything is bad.

“That’s a beautiful song, Sunghoon,” someone says and it jerks Sunghoon back to the present, to reality. Had he been dreaming? Wide awake during the day?

“What’s it called?” Heeseung urges when Sunghoon doesn’t say a thing. Still blinking at his fingers on the piano keys, still blinking the nightmare away.

“I don’t know,” he says, but he thinks he does. He thinks he knows the name of the song but he’s not about to tell Heeseung. It’s embarrassing. It’s all in his mind anyways, the dreams, the nightmares, the ghost of Heeseung from the past.

“Well, it’s beautiful. Longing and sad. But beautiful.”

It’s just a dream .

Some days Sunghoon sits with Heeseung and they’re not really doing anything. They’re just existing together and it feels nice and comfortable and warm, unlike his nights.

He sits and finds himself staring at Heeseung. And then he feels like he might go completely insane if he doesn’t open his mouth and confess all the small feelings in his chest and the big feelings he’s too afraid to look at. 

I think I love you. I think I’ve been in love with you.

Sunghoon finds himself thinking about soulmates again. He wants to ask Heeseung if he still believes in all the words he said months ago; about how soulmates is a ridiculous idea, that he would be opposed to it.

'I think I’ve known you before, I think there’s more to life than just this one, I think souls are tied together in intangible ways that the human mind cannot comprehend', he thinks whenever they’re together and it scares him so much. 

It scares him how he looks at Heeseung and can barely stop himself from kissing those lips; sweet and warm like the rest of him.

He kisses Heeseung with vigour he’s never known. It’s cowardly to do it like this. He knows. When Heeseung is blindfolded and vulnerable and has no idea what’s going on. But this is the only way he can kiss him, confirm the promises those lips hold.

He pins Heeseung against one of the trees surrounding them. 

No one else is here. No one knows. No one will ever know the secrets he keeps, that’s been piling up more and more.

It’s just a dream. And he’s allowed this at least.

He opens his eyes and Heeseung is in front of him. He looks. Shocked. Eyes wide.

Sunghoon belatedly notices his messy hair, his kiss swollen lips.

'Did I do that?'

“Sunghoon–” Heeseung calls him with that tone he always uses when he says Sunghoon’s name. But his voice sounds rougher, scratchy.

Sunghoon doesn’t let Heeseung finish what he has to say. Before he could, Sunghoon is already running away.

It’s just a dream. He wishes he still believes it.

He’s so tired of being haunted with ghosts of his nights, his days, his past. He’s so tired and he just wants to burrow himself in his bed. He wants to never go out, never leave the safe confines of his room. 

Heeseung must hate him, must think he’s weird and crazy. Heeseung hates him and that’s the last thing he needs.

He doesn’t want Heeseung to hate him.

Heeseung still comes to him at night. But only the Heeseung that’s all bones and sharp lines and harsh words. The one that refuses to call him by his name. He keeps pushing Sunghoon away.

“I’m not going with you,” he repeats.

Sunghoon still sees Heeseung in his dreams but when he wakes up there’s missed calls and text messages he’s been ignoring for a week now. Maybe more.

Time is slippery and loops in circles. Sunghoon has no idea anymore.

Sunghoon’s in the woods again. He seems to always end up here no matter where he goes now. He always comes back here.

He’s in the woods and there’s no escape. He’s bleeding a lot but he can’t tell where the wound is. It just hurts everywhere. He lays on the soft damp earth and waits for sleep to release him.

Maybe this is where it ends.

This is where it ends.

**Author's Note:**

> How was it? 
> 
> Please tell me your feedback.


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